Monday, 25 January 2010

So, Haiti has a small and damaged airport. Organizations have been struggling to land planes full of supplies of food, water, drugs, doctors, rescue workers, rescue equipment and troops, and in fact some have had to be turned away, but right in the middle of this Hillary Clinton arrives? Well that’s helpful. Then Bill Clinton turns up with is daughter Chelsea. That’s helpful too. Did they or their entourages get out there and dig through some rubble to unearth someone dying of thirst underneath, or maybe administer pain killers to someone lying on a pus-soaked bed screaming in pain? Or did they swan about a bit looking concerned for the cameras? I leave you to answer that. I have to wonder, what with an election coming up, how long it will be before Brown or Cameron pop out there for their photo opportunities.

Then there’s the Haitians themselves – those being rescued. It seems that every single one of them being dragged from the rubble immediately thanked God. Now did God work all night and tear the skin off his hands to remove the shattered concrete and twisted reinforcing rods? Where was God for the other 150,000 who died, or were they evidently unbelievers with insufficient strength of faith? Did these rescuees thank God for the Duvaliers? I mean the rescuers were sent by God and Him being omnipotent he must have sent the Duvaliers and subsequent corrupt rulers too. And did they thank the all-seeing all-knowing God for sending the earthquake in the first place?

Saturday, 2 January 2010

Profiling is one of the clear subjects where it can be seen that ideology is running completely contrary to common sense and actually killing people. In any other walk of life profiling is useful. Shops do it – they identify the demographic of their customers and stock accordingly. Amazon does it automatically by checking your viewing and buying habits on its site and highlighting suggestions. Other Internet sites work similarly, with the annoying result of all those junk mails you have to delete. It’s standard, because it works. It’s advertising that saves money (as opposed to mass mailing), it enables shops to target customers or work out how to aim for new ones. They use demographics.

However, in politically correct and multicultural government land it mustn’t be done. When the aim isn’t to sell a few extra pairs of knickers but to prevent some nutter dropping a plane out of the sky, blowing apart and incinerating innocent civilians, or maybe slicing up a stewardess then flying a plane into an office block, the forces of law and order must first avoid any accusation of sexism or racism, and most definitely must not offend the sensibilities of worshippers of a medieval religion of hate.

Yet profiling works. Identifying the demographic of those most likely to spend their cash on bulk-bough chemicals and stuff their underpants with plastic explosive is not difficult. Who flew planes into the twin towers, who tube-fried London Underground passengers, who just attempted to bring down this recent trans-Atlantic flight? None of these people were blue-rinse grannies, the old men were quickly locating the plane’s toilet because of prostate problems, not because they wanted to assemble a bomb, the white teenagers were annoyed because they couldn’t use their mobile phones and not because they were surrounded by godless infidels.

No, the people that do these things are young men, usually of a black or dusky colour, inevitably worshippers of Islam and generally have names like: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Muktar Said Ibraihim, Yasin Hassan Omar, Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi Marwan al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah, and Ramzi Binalshibh. Now, maybe I’m a bit thick, but I’m sure I can see a pattern here that might be useful in profiling…